International Museum Day 2017

International Museum Day (IMD) is celebrated around the world every year on May 18th, since 1977. The purpose of this celebration is to raise awareness about the key role that museums play in the development of our societies.

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) coordinates International Museum Day yearly; from America to Oceania including Africa, Europe and Asia, this international event has confirmed its worldwide success – these past years, IMD has been experiencing its highest involvement with almost 30,000 participating museums in more than 120 countries.

This year’s theme is ‘Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums’, the focus of this theme is the role of museums that become hubs for promoting peaceful relationships between people. It also highlights how the acceptance of an unsettled history is the first step towards building a shared future by means of reconciliation.

History is a vital tool for defining a given people's identity, and each one defines oneself through important and fundamental historic events. Contested histories are unfortunately not isolated from traumatic events. These histories, which are often little known or misunderstood, resonate universally, as they concern and affect everyone

“Very often museum collections are a projection of memories and representations of history. IMD provides an opportunity to show how museums display and depict traumatic memories, to encourage visitors to think beyond their own individual experiences. By mediating and expressing multiple points of view, museums play a role in peacefully addressing traumatic histories – while still sharing knowledge of the past and giving it meaning to help us understand the world today. Museums therefore become tools for teaching universal values and help create a common destiny among different, peaceful geopolitical spaces.”

Museums ask fundamental questions about any society by providing tools that encourage critical reflection on the issues of memory that shape it or tear it apart. Using a variety of museum methods and different ways of displaying contested histories, the purpose is for institutions to encourage societies to accept the past and establish a dialogue to help reconcile memories.

Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Wikicommons

By choosing to say the unspeakable in museums, the theme of IMD 2017 looks at how to understand the incomprehensible aspects of the contested histories inherent to humans. Cultural institutions around the world are invited to join in this celebration, and build a vision of the future beyond taboos and towards a better understanding of one another.

To find out how your local museums are celebrating International Museum Day, do not forget to check out their websites!